One week after signing a co-promotional deal with Top Rank and ESPN that made an immediate rematch against Deontay Wilder unlikely, lineal heavyweight champion Tyson Fury has officially pushed the fight off.
After twice delaying a purse bid for the rematch it had ordered, the WBC announced Tuesday it has been informed that Fury (27-0-1, 19 KOs) will instead seek an interim fight this spring in the United States before pursuing a rematch with Wilder (40-0-1, 39 KOs), the WBC champion, this fall.
BREAKING NEWS: @BronzeBomber vs @Tyson_Fury is officially not happening next. The @WBCBoxing has received communications as our process and while Wilder confirmed its willingness to fight the rematch, Fury will take on another fight with expectations to do rematch at a later date pic.twitter.com/vCkXwsQqCd
— World Boxing Council (@WBCBoxing) February 26, 2019
The 30-year-old Fury, who is co-promoted by Frank Warren of Queensberry Promotions, ended a storybook comeback in December by getting up from a pair of knockdowns to settle for a disputed draw against Wilder in a classic fight most felt Fury had won. The native of England had previously overcome drug addiction, depression and obesity in the aftermath of his 2015 upset win over then-champion Wladimir Klitschko.
Now, despite Bob Arum of Top Rank offering a multi-fight deal to Wilder -- who fights under the brand of Al Haymon's Premier Boxing Champions -- that would guarantee a rematch, the odds of one organically happening without it are far less likely due to how splintered the top three heavyweights (including unified champion Anthony Joshua who fights on DAZN) are from a broadcasting standpoint.
"It feels like someone let all the air out of the balloon," WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday. "We are at great moment in the heavyweight division and there was a lot of excitement for this rematch, and we lost a couple of months waiting to get this done.
"I will go to the WBC board and discuss it. The position from Wilder was to officially seek the rematch through the WBC mandate. So we'll look at this and make a determination quickly."
Although Wilder doesn't currently have an exclusive deal with Showtime or Fox, which televises PBC fights, it remains unlikely he would sign a deal with Arum and ESPN considering where Haymon's business partnerships lie.
The fight can still be consummated, in theory, by a two-network pay-per-view deal, similar to when HBO and Showtime combined efforts for Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson in 2002 and Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao in 2015. Those fights, however, did exceptionally more business than Wilder-Fury would be expected to do after their first bout last year produced a reported 325,000 buys.
Although Fury remains the lineal champion for having defeated Klitschko, he can't be stripped of the title for pulling out of the purse bid with the WBC champion Wilder.
Eddie Hearn, the Matchroom Sport promoter who represents Joshua, told Yahoo Sports that Fury's decision could open up the door for a long-anticipated fight between Joshua and Wilder to finally take shape.
"It's disappointing for everyone but possibly good for us," Hearn said of Fury's decision. "If I'm Deontay Wilder, I get on the phone and make the AJ [Anthony Joshua] undisputed fight as soon as possible."
Wilder and Joshua have had little luck negotiating up to this point. Although Joshua, holder of the WBA, WBO and IBF titles, doesn't fight exclusively on DAZN, it's hard to imagine he would eschew the network his promoter provides fights for exclusively in the U.S. in order to take part in a blockbuster PPV on a rival network like Showtime or Fox. The fact that the streaming app DAZN isn't in the PPV business only complicates matters, unless Wilder is willing to sign a deal.
